|
The 19th
Sunday
Ordinary
Time |
1. --
Lanie LeBlanc OP
2. --
Carol & Dennis Keller
3. --
Brian Gleeson CP
4. --
5. --(Your
reflection can be here!)
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1.
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Sun. 19 B
Although I am far away from wanting to leave this life
because of despair, I have joined Elijah in saying, even
sometimes aloud, "This is enough, O LORD!" I have even
murmured like the Jews in the Gospel, questioning not so
much Jesus's teachings but definitely the Church's or a
representative of the Church's interpretation/implementation
of them. The life of a Christian, and perhaps more so for a
Christian woman these days, is not a smooth one. The
Christian life often involves complicated feelings, unwise
or unintentional actions and, finding oneself spiritually in
a different place than close to Jesus. Fortunately, the
results do not have to include deep despair, thanks to the
unconditional love, care, and mercy of the Lord!
My personal view of the angel touching the distraught
Elijah in the first reading is a gentle nudge at first and
an order that seemed like a suggestion. The second time
seemed much more like a push and a command! I, too, can feel
discouraged but have found that the Lord provides second and
even third chances for me to hear what I need to DO through
some pretty unusual modern day "angels". Some pushes are
just downright spiritual shoves!!
The truth is that we can not just continue to murmur or
sit and sulk , even when things seem overwhelming and we
feel utterly helpless. In the Gospel story, Jesus tells his
listeners and us to stop murmuring! He gives them and us two
things to do instead. Jesus says to be "taught by God" and
partake of the living bread of life. We can do those things
even when really discouraged!
Being taught by God can begin simply by finding a book
that focuses on topics of spiritual healing such as
"promises of God", "trusting in the Lord"or "help in times
of trouble". It doesn't take long to meditate on one or two
quotes and apply them to your current personal situation.
One of my favorite things to do is to find a "Jesus book
store" as my kids and granddaughter calls them and slowly
walk through the section that displays scripture quotes on
plaques or holy cards. Could those angels be whispering the
quote and nudging me a little, too?
Most of the time, a little peace and quiet will go a long
way in quieting the murmuring I feel. Making the time to sit
before the Blessed Sacrament where I look at Jesus and Jesus
looks at me is remarkably effective. Of course, receiving
the Eucharist is high on that list of God's "rescue"
actions. I find going to a daily Mass is especially helpful
to me.
We are so blessed to have such a solicitous God! God
knows what we need ... and most of the time (but not always)
it is not just to sit there! We may need the shade of a
broom tree to catch our breath and take stock of things for
a little bit, but surrendering life as Elijah wanted to do,
oh no! I think God wants us to surrender our wills and
wayward or indifferent ways, then take that broom (at least
figuratively) and sweep away the despair and distractions in
our lives.
May the Lord continue to nudge, push , or shove us back
into His Work Force! May we be nourished by the Bread of
Life and the Word of God. May the angels, both heavenly and
human, that the Lord provides in our lives lead us closer to
Jesus.
Blessings,
Dr. Lanie LeBlanc
OP
Southern
Dominican Laity
lanie@leblanc.one
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2.
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Nineteenth Sunday of Ordered Time August 12, 2018
1st Kings 19:4-8; Responsorial Psalm 34; Ephesians
4:30-5:2; Gospel Acclamation John 6:51; John 6:41-51
Elijah went a day’s journey into the desert because
Jezebel was after his head. She promised the dogs would lick
up his blood poured out by her sword. She was angry with him
because Elijah had just proved the prophets of her chosen
religion to be prophets of false gods. In the end, Elijah
slit the throats of 450 of them. Perhaps Jezebel was
thinking of Elijah as a murderer and wanted to punish him
for his crime? Not so! Elijah continually preached against
the worship of Baal and Astarte. Elijah proved in a contest
with the prophets of Baal that Baal was a no-god, unable to
accept a sacrifice offered by his prophets. The corrupt orgy
worships and sacrifices of the first born of his worshippers
were a cult of death and corrupted the people’s hearts and
minds. In this Sunday’s reading Elijah thinks himself a
failure. His victory over the prophets of Baal, dramatic as
it was, made no difference to the people of the Northern
Kingdom, Israel. He fled into the desert for his life. He
rests sitting under a broom tree for shade against the
burning sun and prays that God would take his life and end
his struggle to lift up the Kingdom’s people. He sleeps from
the exhaustion of his flight and overwhelmed by his failure
to convert the chosen people led astray by failed and
corrupt leadership. An angel brings him food and drink. He
eats and drinks and returns to sleep. Again he is awaken by
an angel and fed. With the food and drink Elijah was able to
walk forty days and forty nights without apparent rest or
additional nourishment or drink.
Forty days and forty nights without stopping!? This seems
an exaggeration or the story of a miracle that boggles our
minds. The narrative proves a point for us. With food and
drink from God’s hands we can achieve the impossible. The
narrative continues beyond our short reading this Sunday.
Elijah enters a cave on Mount Horeb. We should know that
Mount Horeb is the same as Mount Sinai. And Mount Sinai is
where Moses met God. It was there that Moses received the
law of God that would lead humanity to its perfection. It is
on Mount Sinai that the commandments were detailed and the
people began working their way personally, culturally, as
tribes loosely connected only by a common ancestry into a
nation, a people God’s own.
We may think of the Mount Sinai experience of these
people as the end of the story. It’s only the beginning of a
journey. That journey is a journey through a desert. When
these ragtag bunch of tribes survive forty years of
wandering they will have learned more about this God – this
Yahweh. They will come to a beginning of a realization of
that Creator God’s continual presence among them. They fall
repeatedly into the Ways of the World with its idolatry and
worship of power, of wealth, of status. Yet each time they
enter a desert that calls them once again to the great
commandments. Those commandments are easily summarized into
two. The first of those is humanity’s response to the great
love God has for his people – "Thou shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your
might." And the second summary is "Thou shall love your
neighbor as much as you love yourself."
Elijah enters a cave on Mount Sinai and waits to hear
from God. After all he was fed with food for his journey to
the place of God’s visitation to the People freed from the
tyranny of Pharaoh. That freeing placed the people on a
journey a full generation long. As Elijah sits in his cave
the mountain is visited with fire, wind, storm, and
earthquake. None of these is a visitation from God. God
tells Elijah to come to the entrance to the cave but to turn
his back to its entrance. After the storms, fire, and
earthquakes, God visits Elijah and passes by the cave’s
entrance and is known only as a whispering.
This is a great story. But it seems so beyond belief that
we dismiss it as lacking any application to us. Yet if we
dive into the story of Elijah we may find in his story hope
for our own lives. Does it not happen to us that we listen
to the Word of God proclaimed to us in the Liturgy of the
Word? Do we not struggle to overcome the corruption and
culture of death of the way of the world? Yet repeatedly the
way of the world creeps into our living, steals the
attention of our children and our friends. Our belief and
our efforts to live according to our faith is a struggle.
Repeatedly the way of Christ triumphs over the way of the
world. Yet in the end we are overwhelmed by the energy of
those who cheat, lie, steal, murder, and rob our families of
their vitality and goodness. Perhaps we fall into a sort of
surrendering-despair by which we go-along to get-along.
We like Elijah fall asleep to the presence of the Lord
with us. We lose sight of the unconditional love extended to
us by our God. We long for God to control, to whip into
submission those who live to destroy God’s love for us. We’d
love to have the energy of idolaters suppressed so we can
live in the light of God’s abiding presence. We’d love God
to come to us in fire and fury, in storm and mighty power.
But instead God comes to us in a whisper.
Just as Elijah is on his journey to find God in the
conflicts of daily living, so also we are on our own
journeys.
In the gospel narrative, Jesus insists we need the bread
that he is. He is the bread from heaven. He lays no claim to
being an energy drink that increases our attention, our
energy, our strength. He is simple bread and drink. He
presents himself as nourishment for our journey. With that
bread and drink, we can also journey to the Mount of God’s
presence with us.
Our lives are a journey. We are not alone in that journey
but are accompanied by generations who have gone before us.
We will be accompanied by the thousands of generations that
follow after us. Each generation that responds to God’s
abiding presence brings us a little closer to Mount Horeb,
to Mount Sinai where God comes to us as the Father came to
the Mount of Transfiguration where Peter, James, and John
witnessed Moses and Elijah speaking with Jesus. It was there
that the Father whispered to those present – "This is my
beloved son. Listen to him!"
As we take the words of our readings with us back into
our daily living – as we walk with bodies nourished by the
Bread and the Wine that is Jesus the Christ, let us walk
with the faith that springs into hope in our hearts and
minds. That hope is fed and nourished by the Love God has
for us. That Love of God is proved by God’s becoming one of
us and walking as we walk.
May we listen well to God’s whispering to us each day.
May it be so!
Carol & Dennis
Keller
dkeller002@nc.rr.com
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3.
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FOOD FOR THE JOURNEY: 19TH SUNDAY B
'Elijah got up and ate and drank [the food and drink
provided by God], and strengthened by that food walked for
forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the
mountain of God.'
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People of God, you and I are familiar with Holy
Communion. We receive it when we are healthy. We receive it
when we are sick. Today, in the light of the Scripture
readings, and especially the sentence just quoted from our
First Reading, I would like to speak to you about receiving
Holy Communion when we are dying. This is to speak of
receiving Jesus Christ as viaticum, i.e. as food for the
journey to the other side of life, receiving him as food
that will empower us to reach that mountain of God which we
call 'heaven'.
The term 'viaticum' means 'food for the journey'
(literally and exactly, it means 'on the way with you').
Originally, viaticum was not a Christian word. In the
ancient pagan world of the Greeks and the Romans, it was
either a farewell banquet or money given for a journey. It
came to be applied to the last journey of dying persons. For
that journey, a coin was placed in their mouths to pay the
fare to the ferryman Charon for rowing the deceased across
the river Styx to the company of gods and heroes. The early
Christians adapted these pagan ideas and practices. For
believers, the Eucharist became a farewell nourishment for
the journey to heaven, a pledge of eternal life, and an
assurance of resurrection.
In the Middle Ages and up to Vatican II, confession and
forgiveness of sins, viaticum, and anointing (as extreme
unction or last anointing) were given in a continuous ritual
for the dying. Since the reforms of the Second Vatican
Council, the Church no longer speaks of 'extreme unction'.
The emphasis in the Church today is on viaticum as the
sacrament for the dying. The Church's prayer-book for the
sick and the dying insists: 'The sacrament of the anointing
of the sick should be celebrated at the beginning of a
serious illness. Viaticum, celebrated when death is close,
will then be understood as the last sacrament of Christian
life' (#175). Viaticum is the ultimate provision for
Christians on their way to their eternal destiny, their
final homecoming. The Church says it signifies ‘that the
Christian follows the Lord to eternal glory and the banquet
of the heavenly kingdom'. Since the Eucharist is a pledge of
the resurrection, the words used after giving viaticum are
these: 'May the Lord Jesus Christ protect you and lead you
to eternal life.'
The value of viaticum for the dying Christian is
illustrated in words of Jesus in today's gospel: 'I am the
living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who
eats this bread will live forever...' Those words of Jesus
are echoed by St Ignatius of Antioch calling the Eucharist
'the medicine of immortality, that antidote that results not
in dying, but in living forever in Jesus Christ'.
Many indications in the Church's revised official prayer
book for the sick and dying suggest that viaticum should be
given some time before the final agony of death, when the
dying are in full possession of their senses. The preferred
setting is within the full celebration of the Eucharist,
which is to include the renewal of the promises of baptism,
the sign of peace - in which all who have come together
embrace the dying Christian - and then Holy Communion under
the signs of both bread and wine. Viaticum may be repeated
as long as the danger of death continues. The most
appropriate time for viaticum may well be when the dying
Christian has reached that stage which Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross,
expert on the stages of dying, has called the stage of
'acceptance'.
In revising its celebration of the sacraments for the
sick and the dying the Church has shown a double concern: -
1. to ensure the presence to the dying of the praying
Church, and 2. to help the dying person complete the
Christian life on earth.
It helps to remember that Jesus was frightened by the
nearness of his death. He asked for the comfort of his
friends to watch one hour with him. He prayed with a certain
desperation: 'My Father, if it is possible, let this cup
pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want' (Mt
26:39). It’s a Christian responsibility to help a dying
brother or sister through the loneliness of their last days
and moments on earth. This is particularly true of family,
relatives, and close friends.
When my mother was dying in Melbourne in 1991, the
biggest consolation I received was the news that my brother
Passionist Tom McDonough had rushed from Templestowe to
Mum's death-bed, and gave her viaticum, and the news of how
Mum struggled to respond to all the Church's prayers as she
was passing over to eternal life.
When the time comes for my last moments on earth, will I
be wanting viaticum as food for my journey to God? You bet I
will. When the time comes for your last moments on earth,
will you be wanting viaticum as food for your journey to
God? I certainly hope so.
"Brian Gleeson
CP" <bgleesoncp@gmail.com>
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4.
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5.
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Volume 2 is for you. Your thoughts, reflections, and
insights on the next Sundays readings can influence the
preaching you hear. Send them to
preacherexchange@att.net. Deadline is Wednesday
Noon. Include your Name, and Email Address.
-- Fr. John
